Tag Archives: BP

……And another one bites the dust. British Petroleum is shuttering its solar manufacturing business. More proof that solar isn’t the big panacea it’s touted to be and is not going to be providing many shovel-ready jobs in the United States or anywhere else, with the possible exception of China.

The unit, which BP has been scaling back since 2008, is the latest sun energy business to fall victim to rampant competition from China, falling prices, overcapacity and lower government subsidies on which the industry still depends.

This doesn’t only affect Europe, this is going to have a worldwide effect…..

The company confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to exit its large-scale projects at Long Haven in the U.S. and Moree in Australia.

Add this to the long list of dead or dying companies such as Solyndra and Evergreen Solar in the US and…..

Swiss bank Sarasin said in a recent study that Conergy and Q-Cells were among the German solar companies most exposed to the sector’s crisis.

We continue to maintain that if solar power was such a great idea government subsidies would not be necessary for solar to be a big financial and energy success and it appears we’re becoming more right as each day passes. Someone should get the people running the US Department of Energy and California Governor Jerry Brown out of their green comas and advise them of this.

Please don’t bring up oil company subsidies. At least they have a viable product, make a profit and pay taxes.

This microscopic image shows how oil is degraded by microbes that break it up into even smaller globulets.

It’s either very interesting or very “convenient” timing this story just pops up soon after the story about NOAA covering up thinks like oil plumes and oil in the gulf food chain.

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe suddenly is flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico and gobbling up the BP spill at a much faster rate than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.

Conspiracy theory would dictate that perhaps somebody is being paid-off on one way or another to suddenly find oil eating microbes, or perhaps it’s just proof that Mother Nature likes to maintain a balance and that she’s come up with her own solution to oil spills.

I’ll take Mother Nature for $1,000 Alex. I would have my doubts that anyone at NOAA would come up with something this strange or convenient, this fast. Besides, the science behind it in the article pretty much goes along with the this is real theory.

Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California, reports the following….

“Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea” cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.

Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deep-water sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

Sounds very good on the face of it doesn’t it. However, at the end of the article you get this little aside, which leads me back to the conspiracy theory.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the U.C. Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Makes one wonder if this was good old Mother Nature? Or, is this perhaps a case of BP or the DOE, or both dangling the carrot of hundreds of millions of dollars more research money in front of someone and having them bite?

You can read the whole article below at the “source” link and judge for yourself. I can’t say one way or the other, but I sure can ask questions about it.

Seems BP just isn’t content with its semi-successfull plugging of the hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, they are alleged to now want to plug scientist’s pie holes in what appears to be an effort to prevent scientist from testifying against them in the 300 or so lawsuits they currently are facing over the Gulf oil spill.

From the Telegraph we get this.

Researchers hired by the oil giant were reportedly asked to sign “restrictive” contracts for work designed to protect the company from more than 300 lawsuits in the wake of the slick.

It was claimed that contained within the contracts were clauses restricting scientists from publishing any academic research undertaken for the oil giant, sharing them with other researchers or even talking about them for as long as three years.

Nice, first we get BP-Iwantmylifebackgate,then BP-Sailboatgate, BP Photoshopgate, then BP-Lockerbiebombergate, now we get BP-Silencegate. It appears we’re going to have BP-Trustfundgate next, as I see allegations of them trying to slow the process down to give the people they’ve put out of work assistance.

Of course with Kenneth Feinberg running the trust find it certainly sounds possible. He doesn’t appear to have the cojones to stand up to Wall Street, so I have to wonder if BP is going to make him their sissy-boy, or perhaps already have done so.

Do you think anyone in charge at BP ever took an ethics class in college? I have to ask. Seems to fit what’s going on, it’s like they’re clueless about doing the right thing. They’re making Richard Nixon look like the epitome of honesty.

If you want to see the alleged contract for yourself, it’s here (PDF) at the BBC website. They even highlighted the offending parts in yellow.

BP evidently doesn’t just want to silence individual scientists, per the below they want to silence whole departments at colleges.

American newspaper reports also claimed that BP attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at southern US university.

Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, who was offered one of the contracts, said BP wanted his whole department.

He said that after he stipulated that his team would have complete academic freedom he never heard from BP’s lawyers again.

That certainly makes for a good case that BP wasn’t THAT interested in securing their services. BP, of course, is claiming they are innocent as the pure-driven snow.

But New Orleans environmental lawyer Joel Waltzer looked over the contract and said BP’s statement did not match up.

“They’re the ones who control the process. They’re depriving the public of the data and the transparency that we all deserve.”

We have a Professor Mendelsson who would work for them for his regular hourly fee. He has to have the quote of the year below.

“Good scientists, they’re going to be giving their opinions based on the facts and they are not going to bias their opinions. What’s most important is credibility.”

Too bad the IPCC doesn’t hire this guy to head up their next report. I think I might trust what he said. Basing opinions on the facts? What a novel idea that would be at certain institutions of the global warming persuasion.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this as I feel it certainly warrants more investigation.